- Public sector bank now eyes over ₹4,000 crore net profit in 2023-24, says MD & CEO Goel
- The bank revises interest rates on fixed deposits of less than ₹2 crore
NE BUSINESS BUREAU
AHMEDABAD, MAY 20
The country’s second-largest public sector bank, Punjab National Bank (PNB) , on Friday reported a whopping 477 per cent increase in standalone net profit for the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2023, at ₹1,159 crore (₹201 crore). In the December 2022 quarter, PNB recorded a net profit of ₹629 crore.
Encouraged by strong bottomline performance, it is now eyeing full-year profits of over ₹4,000 crore this fiscal (2023-24), Atul Kumar Goel, Managing Director and CEO, said in a virtual press conference on Friday.
The latest quarterly bottomline performance of the bank was its best in the last twelve quarters, he added.
On a consolidated basis, PNB reported a net profit of ₹1,741.11 crore in the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2023, as against a net profit of ₹660 crore in the December 2022 quarter. This was also much higher than the net profit of ₹245 crore in the March 2022 quarter.
Goel attributed the strong bottomline performance to better recoveries from non-performing loans. Consistently, quarter-after-quarter last fiscal (2022-23), PNB made a higher recovery while slippages came down in each of these periods.
Goel said that the bank is confident of bringing down its gross NPA level as a percentage of advances to less than 7 per cent this fiscal year and that of net NPA to less than two percentage points.
The Board of Directors has recommended a dividend of ₹0.65 per equity share (32.5%) with a face value of ₹2 each for fiscal 2022–23. For fiscal 2021–22, PNB declared a dividend of ₹0.64 per equity share.
For the entire fiscal 2023–24, PNB has pegged the recovery target at ₹22,000 crore. Last fiscal, the recovery target was ₹32,000 crore, of which the bank achieved about ₹29,000 crore.
Goel said that PNB expects its overall credit growth during the current fiscal year to be 12–13 percent. It was 12.68 per cent in 2022–23. On deposit growth, Goel said that he sees deposit growth of 10–11 percent. “I don’t see deposit rates going up further”, Goel noted.
The bank revised its interest rates on fixed deposits of less than ₹2 crore. Following the revision, the bank has hiked the interest rate by 45 bps on 444 days tenor but has reduced the interest rate by 20 bps on 666 days tenor. On a tenor of 444 days, PNB is now offering a maximum interest rate of 7.25% for the general public, 7.75 per cent for senior citizens and 8.05 per cent for super senior citizens.
